May 12, 2018

I had to think really hard about this week’s Crazy 4 Challenge Theme. Trains. That’s very specific and believe it or not, I have NO train stamps! What? I have over 7000 stamps collected across more than 14 years but not a single train? How is this possible? So I had to get very creative this week!

So I give you a CAMEL train! Also known as a caravan, a camel train delivers goods across many miles. Almost the entire card was done with one stamp set by Hero Arts from a recent card kit. Other than that, all I used was a single ink pad, one die and my watercolour paints. Oh, and some embossing powder for the moon but that is optional. I just think it would be pretty hard to leave the moon intact while painting around it with such deep colours. I used a lot of water to do the sky because extra water means blooms which I love in sunset or sunrise skies.

Here is a close up of the sky. I do wish I’d brought the darker colours down lower but oh well. I just love sunrises and sunsets!

I really wish you could see the lovely shimmer in the Daniel Smith bronzite paint I used for the sand. I tinted it darker with a dark brown paint for the shaded sand areas but you can still see the shimmer. Oh, and the intense metallic bronze tintedFinetec watercolour I used for the details on the camel’s tack (or at least that’s what they call the hardware you put on a horse); it’s very metallic! I didn’t mind that the sandy areas didn’t come out smooth as sand really isn’t in real life. I hand-cut the camel because the white edges really wouldn’t have worked well.

I hope you have better luck with your stash than I had with mine and you have some train stamps! Come on over to the C4C blog and join us this week!

May 05, 2018

Our challenge at Crazy 4 Challenges this week was to make a super hero card! I was a bit stumped by this one! I have one super hero stamp but it’s really old so I pretty much gave it to my son who loves it. Sure, I could have used it anyway but I don’t have any papers that would go with it either! Not really my style as you know!!

So I looked through my stash and found a hero sentiment. Perfect! The Fun Fasts paper is a journaling tag from Basic Grey; the papers are from the same collection all of which I received in a Simon Says Stamp kit from ages ago. I love the floral paper; it’s pretty but not so much that it can’t be used on a masculine card.

I used the shadow stamping technique for the sentiment. With dark ink like I used, you can just shift your paper and stamp again with the lighter ink. However, if you want to use a lighter ink for the main image or sentiment, you will need to emboss it to keep the shadow ink from overlapping. I didn’t want a shiny sentiment so I used some WOW matte clear embossing powder. I didn’t really need to emboss because my main ink was dark but better to do it when I don’t need to then forget when I do need it!

Have you got some cool super hero supplies? Come on over and play our latest challenge with us!

Last month Hero Arts sent a really fun Mexican-themed card kit. When I first saw it, I was hesitant as it really isn’t my style. But I get card kits for a reason, to challenge myself, and the images looked fun to colour. Also, the large ornate die was amazing!

My kids had been begging me to make a Chibitronics card so I combined the kit with some fun lights. The concept was that in the day, the sun in the desert is so hot, it’s practically white hot. But later in the day, it glows orange as it sets. The mouse is coloured with Rather than colour the cacti, I used Distress inks, some Oxide, some regular, to sponge on some colour. After, because the Oxide somewhat covered the stamped lines, I re-stamped using my MISTI.

In this photo, you can see that pulling out the tab both completes the sentiment and actives the lights with a switch. I’m not thrilled with the obvious three lights rather than an overall diffused light so I may try to add some vellum over the two layers of tissue I used to see if I can get it to diffuse more. Once you get the switch set up properly, it works really well.

I’m not into scrapbooking much anymore though I always intend to go back to it some time. I kind of stalled out after my second son turned about 18 months. I never got a decent photo of him because he was obsessed with my camera; so every photo has his face next to the lens, massively blurred out, his arm in front of his face as he reached for the camera or was crying from being told he couldn't have the camera! But it is International Scrapbook Day so I thought I’d wish you a good one!

April 28, 2018

And not just on my card! We recently had a massive ice storm so I guess it is perfect that our Crazy 4 Challenges theme this week is to be inspired by the phrase, ‘skating on thin ice".’

The large snowflake striped die is by Memory Box which I cut from white cardstock and some fancy specialty paper layered to create a 3-D embellishment. The edge of the patterned paper was scalloped using a Simon Says Stamp die which reveals some fun striped patterned paper underneath. From Honey Bee stamps I used the stamps and dies for the sentiment. Overall, this is a pretty simple card with not too much technical or intense going on. But sometimes simple is all you need right? :)

Do you have a take on the phrase ‘skating on thin ice’? Join us over at the C4C blog.

April 21, 2018

Do you love the sea? The beach is my favourite place! It’s where I would go if I was to retire so I often make retirement cards with this theme. This week at Crazy 4 Challenges we were asked to use a sketch so I managed to combine the two.

The paper is from a pack by Prima. It’s an unusual collection of florals, vintage ephemera and masculine papers. These papers were ones with a definite masculine feel so they were perfect for a guy card. Only problem is that most of the wording on the ephemera images was love based. Not exactly perfect for a card for hubby to give to a colleague! ha! I’ve recently been redoing and reorganizing my craft room; in the process I found this awesome tag I saved from a pair of Nevada Jeans. I had to cut off the top of the tag as it was too big but this part of it was perfect and just the right size to fill the spot that had a very obvious lovey sentiment!

Do you love sketch challenges? Be sure to pop on over to our blog to see the main sketch (my version is a bit of a take on the sketch, not exact) and link up your own version!